A book for Carrie.

A couple of years ago Carrie asked me to make her a book about myself. I'll admit that the idea was daunting to me. What would I write about? What parts of my life would be significant enough for me to put in a book and how would I convey all the yucky parts without having the book be a complete downer? There was pressure (from me to me) to complete this project for her 21st birthday. I'm happy to say that I did it. And she loved it. And I actually enjoyed the process much more than I ever thought I would.

Here's how it turned out... I used thick book board and some book cloth for the cover. The pink flowers are made of book cloth too -- glued on with PVA glue and then hand stitched once dry. I did this before I wrapped the book board. The pages are sewn using a Coptic book binding stitch (my first experience with the method that I learned by watching a YouTube video over and over). I loved this method and will definitely be using it again!

Here's the cover page: ♥

Once upon a time page: ♥

A page about how young my parents were when I was born...and about my siblings...
The final page is about Carrie and me: ♥

I didn't photograph every page for this post -- some of the pages are kind of personal. Eh...maybe not really personal but nothing I wanted to post on the World Wide Web. [wink] Other pages include:

• - A page about my Grandma Bessie;
• - Life/Lessons/Lots of Love page with my baby hospital picture and a current picture of me;
• - I ♥ cats;
• - Music;
• - "School Days" with some of my school pictures;
• - "Being Carrie's mom";
• - "Back Then" with a page about Carrie's dad (Craig) and me;
• - Yoga;
• - "Go outside and play" with pix of Doug and me having fun on a quad trip;
• - "I Create" with a [partial] list of the different craft hobbies I've had during my life so far;
• - "Some things about ME" with a list of things that make me happy and/or annoyed;
• - "I ♥ Chocolate" page that includes the recipe for chocolate pancake syrup; and
• - "This is me NOW" with a picture of Doug, Carrie, and me.

It's funny that I fretted over the design and contents of this book for so long. Once I decided on the paper the whole thing just kind of fell into place. I like that I kept the embellishments minimal, and that I allowed myself to use my own doodling and handwriting (Carrie's request). The result is a personal gift, truly from my heart, as requested by my daughter. It's an honest account of who I am, and something that my grand-children can read someday without me being too embarrassed. :o)